WAR MEMORIAL.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18366, 27 April 1925, Page 2

WAR MEMORIAL.

MOVEMENT IN SYDNEY. (ntOJI OUE OWK COBRESPONDEKT.) SYDNEY, April IG. , The State executive of the Returned Sailors and Soldiers' League, with the backing of aji influential committee, has launched a campaign for the erection of a cenotaph m Martin place, in tho centre of the city. About £60,000 has at various time 3 been subscribed in New South Wales for a National War Memorial fund; . but whether the cenotaph, will be supplementary to this memorial, and what; is precisely the position of the .fund to-day, no one seems to know. "0 lien tlie memorial fund was last before the public there was a, spirited difference of opinion, one section urging a utilitarian memorial, on the ground that the money was collected for the specific purpose of erecting a memorial hall, and the other section of the community appealing for' a purely idealistic memorial, on the ground that a monument of symbolic character would have a more inspiring effect than a memorial hall, however serviceable it might be. The; quostion'of a .cenotaph in Martin, piac*?, m the very heart of Sydney, will probably also give rise to two schools of opinion. There will inevitably be those who will contend that while thousands of people will be able to pay a parsing glimpse at a cenotaph in the heart of the city, its idealistic purpose, as an inspiring symbol, will be lost in an atmosphere of constaiit noise and movement, and that its influence, as a memorial of self-sacrifice, as a symbol of a nation's effort, and as an inspiration to generations to come, could be more effectively assured in a spot of comparative quiet, as in one of the principal parks. These psychological aspects apart, however,, a cenotaph or distinctive ' and inspiring design will adorn , a city bow poor in coinniancliQS statuary.